One of the hardest things about having taken a lot of fun psychology and sociology classes in college is that later you can't remember the names of all the cool stuff you learned. At my book club a few weeks ago, I could not for the life of me remember the names of Kohlberg's moral stages nor the name of the Heinz dilemma and let me tell you that makes it darned hard to google. And now I'm struggling with a concept that I understood very well, but which I cannot remember the precise name for it, so I'm just going to call it "cultural vocabulary". Please correct me in the comments.
Cultural Vocabulary, or the term I'm using it in place of, refers to shared cultural concepts. For instance, if I said "Edward Cullen sounds like he is from Area 51," most of you would recognize that I mean that Edward Cullen sounds like an alien being from another planet, even though I've not used any of those exact words. (The more Delightfully Pedantic among you will note that there is an alternate interpretation wherein Edward is an employee of the United States government.)

Alternately, if someone were to say "Vampires don't sparkle," we could immediately have a conversation about the uses of vampires in literature, how their use has evolved over time, and what liberties authors can be reasonably expected to take in world-building without anyone pointing out that vampires don't technically exist, or that if they did, we could just go get one and find out and thereby settle this pesky issue once and for all.

So basically what "cultural vocabulary" means is that people with shared cultural experiences have a vocabulary that makes sense to them, but which may not make sense to anyone outside those shared experiences, even if they know the objective meaning of the words being used. And one of the nice things about being part of a culture is that you pick up a lot of vocabulary through a sort of cultural osmosis -- for instance, I went into the first X-Men movie having never read a single X-Men comic, but I knew all about the characters via conversations with friends who did read the comics.

One of the major problems with cultural vocabulary is that it's very tangled and you can't really easily remove one piece without getting a major mess on your hands. You'll see this in, say, zombie fiction where the writers want the characters to be absolutely confused and befuddled by the very concept of 'zombie', and so they hit on the winning idea that in their fictional world, there's never been any concept of zombies. As if had George Romero not been born, we'd all have no concept of the walking dead because all his ideas came out of a cultural vacuum. This cultural-vocabulary-extraction technique has obvious problems associated with it.

And now we come to Twilight. I think S. Meyer wants the Twilight world to be exactly like ours, only the 'legends' of vampires (and later werewolves) turn out to be true, or at least partially so, based on the Hot! Google! Action! coming later. So with that in mind:

He chuckled. "What are your theories?" I blushed. I had been vacillating during the last month between Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker. There was no way I was going to own up to that.

I find it interesting that Bella reaches for "Bruce Wayne" and "Peter Parker" instead of the more ubiquitous "Batman" and "Spiderman". Is this unusual? It seems unusual to me. One explanation, of course, is that Bella is a comics fan, but we've already established that her only interests are reading and re-reading old Regency novels. This lack of other interests also excludes the idea of her visiting the movie theaters for the latest Marvel and D.C. movies. As a last resort, I'd wonder if someone else she knew had an interest in the characters -- her mother? her father? -- but none of them have mentioned anything like that.

Even allowing for the cultural osmosis that would cause Bella to be aware-of and familiar-with Batman and Spiderman, I find it unaccountably interesting that she refers to them by what I imagine are their lesser-known identities. Are we to assume that Bella has already been doing some Hot! Google! Action! of her own and she landed on the Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker wikipedia pages? I'm wondering what key words would have landed her there? Edward Cullen shares Bruce Wayne's affluence and possible stoicism, but not much else, and as fast and strong as Batman is, he can't perform inhuman feats like leaving shoulder-shaped dents in speeding cars. Peter Parker has supernatural strength and speed, but otherwise he's a pretty poor match compared to most of the other superheroes on the list.

It's possible, of course, that Bella is just reaching for the two most famous and best-known superheroes she can think of, but wouldn't she refer to them in that case by their better known identities? And why wouldn't she reach for Superman / Clark Kent, whose supernatural abilities seem a far better fit than "slings webs all over the place, is additionally pretty strong"? And for that matter, if she has already been googling the Cullens -- or at least thinking about them very strongly -- why has she not thought of vampires already? I would expect a girl whose sole interests are Regency novels and presumably Gothic novels to be familiar with the concept of vampires in passing, and probably more so than she would be with comic characters. It's all very puzzling.

"Can you do me a favor?" I asked after a second of hesitation.[...]"Then can I have one answer in return?" he demanded. "One.""Tell me one theory."Whoops. "Not that one.""You didn't qualify, you just promised one answer," he reminded me."And you've broken promises yourself," I reminded him back."Just one theory -- I won't laugh.""Yes, you will." I was positive about that. He looked down, and then glanced up at me through his long black lashes, his ocher eyes scorching."Please?" he breathed, leaning toward me.I blinked, my mind going blank. Holy crow, how did he do that?"Er, what?" I asked, dazed."Please tell me just one little theory." His eyes still smoldered at me. "Um, well, bitten by a radioactive spider?" Was he a hypnotist, too? Or was I just a hopeless pushover?

I'm tempted to start mashing the keyboard again. Um, okay, I can do this. *deep breath*

I'm disappointed that Bella only uses "holy crow" one more time in the book, as it seems like such a delightful saying. I'm disappointed that Edward has magic glamor powers -- YES HE DOES WE JUST SAW THEM -- but I'm pretty sure we never see them again, and it won't stop him from berating Bella for being dumb enough to be with him when oh my god, you have magic glamor powers, what is she supposed to do?! I mean, either he has magic glamor powers or he was originally supposed to and this wasn't taken out with the rest of the edits.

Or, I suppose, he could possibly realize the sensual hold he has over Bella, but considering he doesn't understand anything else about her because a century of mind reading makes you crappy at body language, I highly doubt it.

Oh, and also, I'm sad that we're back to Bella insulting herself for being human.

"That's not very creative," he scoffed. "I'm sorry, that's all I've got," I said, miffed.

YES. YES, HE WON'T LAUGH BECAUSE HE PROMISED, BUT HE WILL MOCK AND INSULT YOU. STAY CLASSY EDWARD.

And just in case we forget, this conversation is about how Edward can do impossible things. This is something he promised to tell Bella about if only she wouldn't make a scene in front of the paramedics about how he impossibly saved her. Bella trusted him, but when they were alone at the hospital, he not only went back on his promise, he threatened her and tried to pretend there was something wrong with her and her memory. And now he's badgered her in to talking about her theories on the subject so he can smirk at her and call her uncreative.

So Edward doesn't just break promises to protect his family from discovery, he breaks them for fun.

He glanced over my shoulder, and then, unexpectedly, he snickered. "What?" "Your boyfriend seems to think I'm being unpleasant to you -- he's debating whether or not to come break up our fight." He snickered again.

And this is very interesting. Another piece of common cultural vocabulary is that when young men assign boyfriend status to other young men in an unprompted setting, it's supposed to be an opening for the young woman to jump in with oh, he's not my boyfriend, I'm single and totally available clarification, if she chooses. It's a way to clarify relationship standing in the early stages of (for lack of a better word) courtship, and if it's handled well, it can be passably non-awkward. Most people understand this, and the conversation usually slips by quickly without the young woman saying, "Wait, why would you think he's my boyfriend again?" because she recognizes that that wasn't the real question.

But... Edward isn't just any young man. He's a telepathic young man who can read everyone in the room except Bella. So why does he say this?

Edward must know that Mike isn't Bella's boyfriend. Even if Mike was somehow thinking that Bella was his girlfriend, Edward knows that Eric and Tyler still think they have a chance with Bella and Edward also knows that Jessica is excited about taking Mike to the dance. He doesn't need Bella to clarify their relationship for information purposes. He doesn't need her to clarify for Masquerade purposes either; him knowing that the two aren't an item shouldn't be secret or surprising since the whole school should know by now that Bella isn't going to the dance with Mike, but Jessica is.

So why does Edward call Mike Bella's boyfriend, even though he knows the term is incorrect? Does he just want to hear Bella deny it for his ego's sake? Is this an attempt to provoke her into talking about the situation, and clarifying for Edward why she's not attracted to the other controlling guy with anger issues in her Biology class? ("Tell me, Bella. I'm richer than Mike and prettier than Mike and more controlling than Mike and have more anger issues than Mike. Is that a good thing in your eyes or a bad thing?")

But there's another thing here, assuming Edward is telling the truth: Mike wants to break up their conversation not because he wants to steer 'his' girl from Edward Cullen, but because he doesn't want Edward Cullen being unpleasant to her. Edward says Mike "seems to think" Edward is being unpleasant, but he thinks that because Edward is being unpleasant! He's been unpleasant the entire conversation, and apparently that fact is written enough on Bella's face to cause at least one of her friends real alarm.

Edward doesn't take this "reading of Bella by proxy" diagnosis on board and start being less unpleasant to Bella because... he just doesn't seem to care about her feelings, or maybe it's that he doesn't give any credence to other people's assessment of the situation.

This is a problem.

It's one thing for Edward to not know how to respond to Bella because his lack of mind reading severely handicaps him after years of relying solely on it; it's another thing for him to read other people's assessment of Bella's distressed mood and blow it off as Not His Concern.

Edward isn't abusing Bella out of ignorance, because his "ignorance" is carefully constructed to be maintained as long as he wants to benefit from it.

Twilight Life Enrichment Moment: (Because I like to be positive now and again.) Over Thanksgiving weekend, I kept telling Husband how much I'd miss him while he was gone to see his family. I said, "Husband, I've removed the engine from your car so you can't leave me." He smiled and fake-sniffled and said, "I love you, too."

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I mean, either he has magic glamor powers or he was originally supposed to and this wasn't taken out with the rest of the edits.

If that is the case then this is definitely not the only thing that missed the glamor culling process. Consider their conversation earlier in the day where Bella could form complex, coherent, and biting sentences when looking away from Edward, but every time she looked at him she was knocked down silence, one word confused responses, or (on a single occasion) an uncomprehending two word question.

At this point I'm pretty much going with the theory that any time Bella says more than four words in a row it means she's looking away from Edward.

For that matter, I'm understating the effect above because I didn't mention that the words Bella could use while looking at him were monosyllabic. The most she could do looking right at him was two syllables.

She couldn't think, she couldn't talk, and most of all she couldn't stay angry. That's how he got her to agree to the trip to Seattle in the first place. His wonderful face crushed her reasonable mind. In the end all she could do was nod because she'd lost the ability to speak.

I'm not a comics fan, and I know Batman's and Spiderman's and Superman's other names. I think we can put this one down to cultural literacy. I don't know Wolverine's name, because I have no actual knowledge.

Why she uses the ordinary name rather than the heroic alias, well, except for the moment with the crashing car or whatever it was, she's only seen Edward in his trying-to-pass-for-ordinary aspect. She's not talking to Spiderman, she's talking to Peter. (Wasn't he a high-school student in his earliest versions?)

Ah! Now THAT makes a certain amount of sense, I like that. Although it doesn't 100% fit with the worshipfulness she reserves for him, but we'll give her a pass on knowing/not-knowing that Peter Parker is not known for his debonair air?

Actually, I wonder if an earlier draft not only had Edward's glamor, but Bella as a comic book fan.

And, of course, that would HAVE to be cut, in order to make her ignorant about vampires in every way. If you're not going to re-write the world (and I think most authors shouldn't because of the risks involved) and you want your heroine to have never heard of vampires, you almost HAVE to cut all her interests. Even making her a fan of old literature was dancing dangerously close to the line...

Actually, I might have gone with Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker rather than Batman and Spiderman if I were writing that scene too. I mean, I probably would have gone with something else entirely - Bella's 'bitten by a radioactive spider' is more elegant - but I think I would have gone with proper names over superhero names. Because:

a. If Edward has a secret identity, she can only be meeting his bad-mannered alter ego. Batman's alter ego is named Bruce Wayne; Spiderman's is named Peter Parker. If she only knew him as Biteman or whatever, then comparing him to Batman and Spiderman would be consistent; as it is, the consistent thing is to go with the non-superhero names.

b. The aesthetic of a vampire romance story is very different from that of a superhero-crimefighter story - especially for people who aren't comics fans. Please don't anyone jump on me for bashing comics, but the general perception of non-comics readers who just pick things up by osmosis - which is to say, of Bella herself and of Meyer's target audience, and also of me - superhero comics are hypercharged, kinetic, very boyish and enjoyably silly. 'Silly' is the absolute last thing you want the audience to be thinking in a situation of this kind; Twilight depends on being moody, melancholic, obsessive and earnest, and seeing the silly side is fatal to that mood. 'Bruce Wayne' and 'Peter Parker' aren't exactly ordinary-sounding names, but they sound a lot less silly than 'Batman' and 'Spiderman'. It fits much better tonally.

As to your point about Superman being a more appropriate choice than Batman, depizan ... I think it's worth remembering that this is, among other things, very much a book about wanting to be glamorous, to join the ranks of the Beautiful People. Too much knowledge of an unfashionable subject is not glamorous, and comic books, whatever else they are, are not hip and elegant - or at least, superhero ones aren't. They sit at the wrong cafeteria table. Bella shouldn't be too knowledgeable about them if she's going to fit her aspirant role.

It's possible she also rules out Clark Kent because the one thing non-comics fans know about him is that he's mild-mannered, bespectacled and romantically gauche. Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker might be as well, but it's not what's known about them from the outside; the only one who's famous for being a nebbish is Clark Kent.

My take is that Bella has only a general cultural knowledge of comic books, picks two of the three most famous ones (X-Men is not in the same iconic league when it comes to non-fans) and leaves out the most nebbishy one.

I think that Batman and Spiderman were used because they had movies done of them much closer to the publishing of Twilight than Superman has. Thus they would be more prominent culturally, at least as of then.

Maybe I'm just a huge nerd (well, that's probably true regardless) but Spiderman and Batman's day names don't seem to be so esoteric a reference that a random bookish teenage girl would be unlikely to think of them when presented with a person who A: appears to have superpowers, and B: regularly acts inexplicably and bizarrely. I mean, sure, maybe it's not what everyone would say, but it doesn't seem to be quite so out of the norm that it would require further explanation of Bella's character beyond "has lived in America at some point in the last thirty years". I mean, maybe if she brought up Stephen Strange (or, hell, Hal Jordan) then maybe, yeah, that's something you could arguably need some level of comic-book contact beyond regular cultural osmosis to know. But Peter Parker? Would it really be that weird for someone to know the name Peter Parker, even if they'd never touched anything Marvel in their life? Again, huge nerd, I could easily be overestimating the ubiquity of this stuff. And I'm not American, so I don't have any real idea of how much comic book trivia had seeped into the public consciousness in 2005. All I can say is that it didn't jump out at me as an odd or unexpected thing for her to say.

I fart in Edward's general direction. Still waiting for the part where he does literally anything to justify his interacting with Bella, aside from being pretty.* I'm finding it increasingly difficult to understand why she doesn't just sigh, stand up, and walk away from this entire mess of a conversation. Or at least stop walking over to him when gives her his royal wave.

*Canonically, that is. I've been completely sold on the Vampire Glamour thing ever since Chris started breaking down exactly how much difference there is in Bella when she is and isn't looking directly at Edward, but unless being mind-controlled is part of the fantasy (which... Well, it wouldn't be the weirdest part of the series, I suppose) I think it's unfortunately confined to the realm of meta-detail.

Twilight depends on being moody, melancholic, obsessive and earnest, and seeing the silly side is fatal to that mood

Also, if you're going by the movie characterizations, "moody, melancholic, obsessive and earnest" are *exactly* what Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker are.

I mean, as a comic book geek, I'd have personally gone for, I dunno, "Warren Worthington III" -- incredibly rich, handsome, and arrogant, very much a jerk, not so much the super-strong but *does* go the mopey angsty route and literally becomes Death. Also dates the Dazzler at one point, which just makes my giggle.

Mentioning Bruce Wayne seems like mentioning Warren Buffet. The big thing about Batman is that he lacks superpowers of any kind. Bruce Wayne is no more likely to have been able to save Bella from the van than I would have been.

Mentioning Peter Parker makes some very limited sense in terms of powers, but none in terms of personality. I've never even touched a Spiderman comic, or a Superman one for that matter, and I know that Peter is a nerd on a level Clark Kent could never hope to manage. If we're looking for Peter Parker it seems like Eric would be a more likely candidate than Edward.

So I think when mentioning Peter she must have been talking about powers. That might actually be why she said Peter's name in her head but didn't say it out loud. Telling Edward he reminded her of Peter would be telling Edward he was a social misfit, and that is something that we can't have.

So, on the subject of Peter's powers, was Edward bitten by a radioactive albino hemophagic jerkface spider*? I think the weird thing for me is that she picks one candidate that has no powers whatsoever, and another whose powers don't seem to match all that well. Pretty much every superhero other than Bruce Wayne and those like him, is super strong to some degree or another. Peter is, as far as I know, no exception. So he kind of sort of fits with Edward in that respect. As far as I know he has nothing about super speed going on. Super reflexes maybe, I'd have to ask a fan or wikipedia, but those wouldn't have gotten him to Bella in time to save her from the van even if he does have them.

Pete's big thing is that he can climb walls. That doesn't seem to fit Edward very well. And as for Edward, maybe if we consider his rock hard marble white ice cold skin to be an exoskeleton then we might be able to argue that he's vaguely spider like, but that seems to me like a rather large stretch. He just doesn't seem to be doing the things that a spider can.

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I do think it's interesting that Bella turns to comics when she's looking for answers and does it in an intimate seeming way. She's not someone who thinks of them as Batman and Spiderman as the unwashed masses might, she's someone who knows them by their real names. She has that kind of a relationship with them. Like one of his friends feeling comfortable calling Mark Twain, "Sam."

It makes me wonder when Bella lost interest in comics, and what else she might have lost interest in around the same time. Perhaps she had a lot of hobbies that she just lost touch with. Maybe there's more to Bella's past than implied by her present. Of course if that's true, it's sad. It means that she wasn't always thus, and that means she's fallen a long way.

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I find myself wondering if the reason Superman wasn't mentioned is because Superman is pretty much the only one who could outclass Edward when it comes to powers. Someone who knows comics would doubtless be able to think of many examples of people with powers beyond Edward Cullen (I'm guessing most of them would be villains), but of the famous ones I think only Superman comes off as more powerful. Bruce Wayne is just an ordinary person, Peter Parker isn't nearly as powerful, durable, or fast as Edward Cullen. Meyer only picked characters were Edward could think, "I'm way more awesome than those puny mortals," where if she'd have chosen Superman Edward would have to deal with the fact that Bella is assuming him to be more magically impressive than he actually is.

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*Yes, I know that Bella isn't aware Edward drinks blood yet. It just sounded good to say it that way.

if she'd have chosen Superman Edward would have to deal with the fact that Bella is assuming him to be more magically impressive than he actually is.

And we can't have that, because it would make both Edward and the book far better.

Actually, that's rather weird. I can't be the only one who's more likely to sympathize with someone having to go "er, actually, I'm not quite that awesome" than someone going "actually, I'm far more awesome." Am I just out of touch with teenage girls (having, in many ways, never been one)?

My take is that Bella has only a general cultural knowledge of comic books, picks two of the three most famous ones (X-Men is not in the same iconic league when it comes to non-fans) and leaves out the most nebbishy one.

Hmm... as has been pointed out by others, Peter is also pretty darn nerdy. Though maybe that hasn't made it out into the cultural vocabulary as well. Or we're dealing with a problem with the age of the author. If one thinks of Clark Kent from the Superman movies, then, yes, he's nerdier than Peter gets portrayed, but if you throw in The Adventures of Lois and Clark and Smallville (I think - I only saw the first season), then he's not particularly nerdy. Where as Peter from the recent Spiderman films...

I still find Bruce Wayne a really odd choice due to his lack of super powers. And I have trouble believing that knowing that would require comic book knowledge due to how many Batman things - movies, TV shows, etc - there are. I mean Disney did their own Batman-parody, essentially, in Darkwing Duck*. It just seems like if Bella knows Batman is Bruce Wayne, Bella should know that the guy has zero powers. (Unless unlimited funds is a superpower.)

*Which is awesome. And I say this as someone who doesn't generally go for parodies.

Would it really be that weird for someone to know the name Peter Parker, even if they'd never touched anything Marvel in their life?

No, not in the least. What's weird, to me, is using that name. To return to my example of Mark Twain, I'm pretty sure a lot of people know the name Samuel Clemens, but they don't reach for it when they're thinking about ... Mark Twain. For someone to know the two names and decide on the personal name implies, at the very least, more thought put into it than the casual largely passive process of cultural osmosis involves.

Kit and Amaryllis are both talking about Bella choosing which names to use in her head by thinking it over in terms of when it is appropriate to use the personal name and when it is appropriate to use the public name. This is not something she did in response to something outside herself, as was the case with Kit and Amaryllis, instead it's entirely internal. With no external prompting of any kind Bella decided that it was right and proper to figure out which name to use. "Do I say Usul? Do I say Paul?" It's not a question I expect most people to dwell on. Especially considering that she was never planning to say any of it aloud.

It especially stands out because the only way she could have gotten to Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker is by coming there via Batman and Spiderman. The not-hero identity doesn't stop speeding vans. Either she's conditioned enough that when she sees someone crawling on a wall impossibly she doesn't think "Spiderman" but instead "Peter Parker"* or she started off thinking "Spiderman" and the stopped herself, said, "No, that's not right. He's not called Spiderman when he's at high school, there he's Peter Parker."

I don't know exactly how she got the point where she was thinking about them in terms of real names instead of hero names, but whatever it was I think it would probably fit into Brodie's dialog from Mallrats without the need to change the character at all. (Well, I suppose it would require him to think about something other than sex for a little while, and that is a meaningful change.)

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*Mind you I'm not sure my first thought would be either of these two things.

So, on the subject of Peter's powers, was Edward bitten by a radioactive albino hemophagic jerkface spider*?

Coincidentally enough, the 90s Spider-Man cartoon "streamlined"* the origin of Morbius, the Living Vampire, by changing it from "brilliant scientist attempts to cure his blood disease by getting bitten by a radioactive bat" to "brilliant science student uses Lego Genetics Gun to analyse Spider-Man's blood which is fed on by a vampire bat he was keeping in his lab for reasons related to a bat-carried plague in his home Transylvanian village** which then bites him, thus giving an actual explanation for his superhuman strength and agility. Somehow, however I doubt Bella is as knowledgeable about the minutiae of obscure antivillains, especially once Blade showed up and the writers seemed to forget that Morbius wasn't an actual vampire.

*In the narrative sense, not in the sense of making it simpler.**Not quite Remus Lupin levels of determinism, but pretty close.

Hmm... as has been pointed out by others, Peter is also pretty darn nerdy.

Yes, but you'd have to be reasonably up on comic book lore to know that. Until I saw the Sam Raimi movie, I didn't; I just knew he had a spider costume and some kind of job with a newspaper. I think people are overestimating how much we unwashed masses actually know!

BrokenBell: unless being mind-controlled is part of the fantasy (which... Well, it wouldn't be the weirdest part of the series, I suppose)

It doesn't read like mind-control fetish porn to me. It focuses on the wrong sorts of things, uses the wrong sorts of words. At best, this:

He looked down, and then glanced up at me through his long black lashes, his ocher eyes scorching. "Please?" he breathed, leaning toward me. I blinked, my mind going blank. Holy crow, how did he do that? "Er, what?" I asked, dazed. "Please tell me just one little theory." His eyes still smoldered at me. "Um, well, bitten by a radioactive spider?" Was he a hypnotist, too? Or was I just a hopeless pushover?

might be one of those “oddly fascinating” bits, where they accidentally use the right words for a short time. Maybe. Towards the low end. (I've seen way better oddly-fascinating-type mind-control stuff than that.)

Well, that was why I added that that might not have made it into the cultural vocabulary.

Its hard to know what's common knowledge for an area one has more than common knowledge in. I run into that all the time in categories of "stuff I know." Of course, I've also run into it plenty from the other side and been the person going "who?" "what?" *baffled look* while someone else goes "doesn't everyone know that?"

Maybe it's the way you've excerpted (I've never read the books) but "superhero" is a really stupid guess. Look how easy it is to come up with something better: 1). ELVES. Definitely the number one guess. Glamour is a defining property of elves. Glamour, arrogance, mysterious powers and goals-- all absolutely stereotypical faerie stuff. The odd eating habits even fit, as "being repulsed by gross mortal food. "2) MUTANTS. A weird family of mutants who keep to themselves. Like in the old Henry Kuttner short stories.3) SORCERERS. This is the same as the mutant family idea, but they train to get their powers instead of just being born with them.4) MAD SCIENTISTS. They are the playthings of a mad scientist who has given them odd powers. Sort of like the Island of Dr Moreau, but with people not animals 5) EVIL. She's supposed to be bookish but the only author you've mentioned so far is Jane Austen. If it's old books she likes, why not go for Gothic and have Satan, dark rituals, powers gotten at horrible cost, and all that?

I guess we get "superhero" because the author is trying to convince us that Edward is heroic. Because Bella thinks Edward is a superhero we will think he's a superhero.

Well, now that I've thought it over the Bruce Wayne / Peter Parker reference makes sense if we remember that Bella (unlike us) doesn't know that Edward has superpowers

So the question she's asking herself is not "What pop cultural figure is Edward like?" but "How does a super-hot but otherwise normal [as far as she knows] person do those beyond-normal things?" Give her the benefit of the doubt and pretend she hasn't read the back cover of the book. What she has seen is so outside the reality she knows, she pretty much HAS to grasp at science fictional / fantastic explanations.*

If it were *me*, my first thoughts would be a) technological assistance or b) (less likely) mutation / physical alteration. (A) would demand scientific expertise and pots of money, both of which Edward has; (B) would make me think of the origin "bitten by a radioactive X" which is well enough known to be a standard pop-cultural joke.

Coupled with the fact that Edward seems determined to keep this a secret, it's not such a strech even for a non-comics fan to think "secret identity." Rich scientific jerk maps naturally onto the secret identity "Bruce Wayne"; radioactive something bite leads to secret identity "Peter Parker."

But remember, out loud Bella is focussing on the "how" question, not the "who". If her imaginative reasoning had led her as far as "strange visitor from another planet", then I guess "Clark Kent" would have been added to the list.

Personally, I think I'd have reached for Superman, because Superman is an incredible douchenoodle, pretty much all the time. And he's the kind of extremely popular, incredibly handsome jerk that tends to get a lot of attention. And he can stave off spinning deathvans with a single bound, or something.

But then, Kit has an excellent point about Clark Kent being kind of a dweeb, and one of the only secret identities I can think of (but I'm not a Marvel nerd either) who's noted for being kind of a dweeb.

No, not in the least. What's weird, to me, is using that name. To return to my example of Mark Twain, I'm pretty sure a lot of people know the name Samuel Clemens, but they don't reach for it when they're thinking about ... Mark Twain. For someone to know the two names and decide on the personal name implies, at the very least, more thought put into it than the casual largely passive process of cultural osmosis involves.

Right or wrong, this was the weird feeling I had for the passage, too. More evidence that my mind is apparently tuned to very similar wavelengths as yours, Chris. It seemed to imply familiarity to me, and of a kind that I wouldn't have expected. It was just... a jarring passage.

You know, I think you've just bounced off of my basic problem - we don't know what Bella's line of thinking was, nor do we know what pools of reference she's using. We're left trying to fill in and explain. If we'd just been given a little of her thinking through "what kind of beings/people can stop a van with their body, without injury or lasting injury?" it'd work ever so much better.

And there are so many different possibilities that even if you through vampire in the list, it'd be buried in all the others. Angels, demons, mad science (nanobots, genetic engineering, personal force field), magic, mutants, elves, pacts with the devil, and so on and so forth. Hell, a more fun book could get a fair amount of humor out of her various ideas whether she was running through them in her head or telling them to Edward.

I think he has learned his past, but only in the last few years. I don't follow comics that closely anymore though. (Wikipedia indicates that Squirrel Girl calls him "James" in a recent storyline, so presumably he recognizes his name now even if he doesn't use it much.)

Seeing her frame of reference would also provide characterization and world-building. When you read this passage, or at least, when *I* read this passage, I have the following reactions:

1. "Wait, what? Um. I guess comics exist in this world. OK. Makes sense." 2. "Wait, how does she KNOW about them?"

Cultural vocabulary aside, Bella has almost superhuman powers of ignoring people. She frequently points out that she doesn't listen to the kids at school. She apparently had no close friends in Phoenix. Her mother and father are not well-springs of cultural knowledge, and she talks to them as little as possible anyway. She doesn't seem to watch TV or movies or read anything that was written in the last 100 years. She doesn't use the internet. She's born out of her time, in some ways.

I think probably this is Bad Writing. Relationships and talking and interests would have distracted from the love story that's on display. But it hits hard when suddenly Bella is talking about comic book heroes and I'm thinking, well, surely she would have picked it up somewhere... right?? I'm not sure, to be honest.

I'd actually be kind of surprised if Batman has never stopped an out-of-control vehicle.

And with that in mind, I'm inclined to think that "Peter Parker or Bruce Wayne?" could also be phrased as, "Did you use superhuman strength which you're keeping secret, or futuristic technology which you're keeping secret?"

I've always wanted to read comic books -- I like the idea of comic books, but whenever I try I get confused, because I see the whole page at once and can never remember whether the panels go left to right or right to left, top to bottom or bottom to top, and even within a single frame, I get confused as to who said what first, if more than one character is talking. I just find the layout confusing.

The only movie we ever saw based on a comic was the X-men movie that came out in the late 90's, which we watched in one of our classes in high school. We don't remember anything about the movie, "something about mutants?" but we remember that we watched it.

Cultural osmosis knowledge:We know Bruce Wayne's name, but we didn't know which comic book character he was attached to until we read it here. We didn't know Peter Parker at all, but we do know that Spiderman was bitten by a spider. We didn't know that batman didn't have superpowers. We know there's a character named Joker and Robin but we don't know their alliances, or we didn't until a recent Slacktiverse thread mentioned that Joker was the bad guy. Still don't know about Robin though. Superman, we know that he comes from a different planet and wears red and has a cape and is allergic to kryptonite, that his alter ego wears glasses and there was a girl named Lois or Louise.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live in sewers and are the good guys and fight the bad guys. Their names are Donatello, Rafello, Michaelangelo, and Leonardo. We wanted to watch the cartoons when we nine, but our parents wouldn't let us because it was violent. Given the amount of real-life violence I had been exposed to at this point, this is hilarious.

I literally cannot think of any other comic book characters, beyond memories of Archie paperbacks from the supermarket when I was five, but I never got to look inside one.

If I had the knowledge that Bella has at this point, my first guess would be the stories I've read about how an adrenaline rush can be enough in rare cases to pick up a vehicle, and I would probably chalk the "i thought he was four cars away from me" thing to the head injury.

I've always wanted to read comic books -- I like the idea of comic books, but whenever I try I get confused, because I see the whole page at once and can never remember whether the panels go left to right or right to left, top to bottom or bottom to top, and even within a single frame, I get confused as to who said what first, if more than one character is talking. I just find the layout confusing.

It seems like there should be a way to fix that for you. Preferably something done on a computer because otherwise it would probably involve cutting up the actual comic books and you'd need more than one of each book because the pages are printed on each side and to make who spoke first clear you'd probably need multiple copies of many of the panels.

At the moment I'm not set up to do anything of the sort (amoung other things I think it would require comic books and a scanner of which I have neither) but maybe at some point in the future I could help you with that. On the other hand, maybe the attempt would be an abject failure.

We know there's a character named Joker and Robin but we don't know their alliances, or we didn't until a recent Slacktiverse thread mentioned that Joker was the bad guy. Still don't know about Robin though. Superman, we know that he comes from a different planet and wears red and has a cape and is allergic to kryptonite, that his alter ego wears glasses and there was a girl named Lois or Louise.

Robin is good, he is Batman's sidekick. Lois is the woman in Superman.

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Changing gears and people,

I don’t know about anyone else, but if I find myself comparing a guy to superheroes using comic books that I (hypothetically) haven’t read…I must be joking with/teasing him. Or, at the very least, lightly flirting. There just wouldn’t be a very serious context if I were to have such a conversation.

All that I've figured out of how this might work in the Edithverse is that Ben would say, "You were bitten by a radioactive eggplant," as his first theory.

A note about the Peter Parker-Edward Cullen comparison: Peter Parker in virtually all continuities at least starts out as likeably dorky. However, his very first issue had him with some pretty serious anger problems. He wasn't interested in being a superhero, and even let a burglar he could have easily stopped escape because he was pissed at the guy's victim. Than the burglar goes off and kills his Uncle (read father, since Pete's biological parents are out of the picture for reasons usually left unexplained) Ben, which leads to Peter adopting "With great power comes great responsibility" as his motto.

The thing that stops the above from being either old news or uninteresting to all y'all is my realization that Eddie doesn't have to worry about that. Virtually every other capes-and-tights superhero with a secret identity keeps it at least partially in order to protect their non-powered loved ones. They have parents and friends and love interests that their more dastardly foes would happily murder in order to get back at them. Even Batman, an orphan whose main romantic interest is as competent as him, has his butler/father figure/emergency surgeon and the guy who runs his company while he's off being a playboy or a vigilante. Edward doesn't have that problem. His whole social circle has been practically untouchable for decades. He doesn't have to worry about losing any of them, even to age or disease. No wonder he's such an asshole. -----I'd also like to add psychic powers, deific by-blow, and touched by Elder Thing to the list of possible things Mysterious Superpowered Guy could be.

Bella knows about comics because her Biology teacher, Mr. Banner, has taken a shine to her and has decided to turn her on to them. (Bella doesn't realize it, but there are few who would know more about comics than Mr. Banner does. He is a certifiable nerd.)

But Mr. Banner's plans are all for nought. It doesn't take Bella long to make up her mind that she's more interested in Edward The Depressor than in Mr. Banner's Men In Tights. However, her sessions with Mr. Banner have left her with a residuum of knowledge, which explains why she's familiar with Batman's and Spiderman's given names.

Silver Adept: very much earlier Spider-Man television show (the theme that Homer Simpson is riffing on in the Simpsons Movie)

They have a street musician performing it in the recent movies, but only the first verse.

and thus, by having to be in the same house as her mother, Bella has learned something.

Makes sense to me. Brother watched a lot of those Spider-Man cartoons on Teletoon Retro a while back and I still know all the words to the theme song. (“Is he strong?/Listen bud/He's got radioactive blood/Can he swing, from a thread?/Take a look, overhead/Hey there, there goes the Spider-Man...”)

I don't know if this will help or not, but marvel.com has comics available to read online. One of the choices for the comic viewer is called "smart panels" and will move from panel to panel or down a large panel in the order the panels are meant to be read. For two page spreads, the whole artwork will be shown first and followed by a close up view to read the text bubbles.

Navigation is easy, just click the left or right arrows at the bottom to change panel or turn the page. There's also a button that allows you to choose with page you want to view.

Not all of their issues are online or available for free, but it should give you a chance to check out some comics and see if you're interested in them.

The comic viewer tends to open in a new window, which may or may not be a downside for you.

Perhaps Bella babysat, back in Phoenix. I got my superhero knowledge-by-osmosis from watching the Adam West Batman and then the nineties cartoons, often while being babysat or otherwise parked somewhere because I was too young to get home by myself. If Bella was babysitting she could acquire the basic info without breaching her shield of disinterest by actively engaging in the world around her.

quoth Dezipan:Actually, that's rather weird. I can't be the only one who's more likely to sympathize with someone having to go "er, actually, I'm not quite that awesome" than someone going "actually, I'm far more awesome." Am I just out of touch with teenage girls (having, in many ways, never been one)?

You are not the only one. I also like the less awesome, more humble/human/humorous heroes like most of Spiderman's incarnations and Kitty Pryde and Jubilee in the X-Books. I have to say though, when I was a teenage girl I was much more impressed by strength and broody seriousness, as I got older my tastes turned around and now the angstbucket routine is boring. Lookin' at you, Wolverine!

I'm late as per usual, but good argument Ana. I was more willing to consider cutting Edward some slack in being so bad at reading Bella's situation (though not all of his other faults), because I can totally imagine being a mind-reader for 100 years would severely cripple one's ability to determine moods any other way. Much like that time I went to the demonstration where a few blind activists had made a pitch black room with some street sounds where people could walk through. Despite having all the non-visual senses a blind man has, and decades of experience callibrating those senses to visual information, every single one of us was completely lost. But there's no excuse for this case where he reads minds and thinks "Oh how funny, people think I'm being mean to this girl." If we were to think he's flying blind with Bella, this should be a lifesaver for him. He can use his mindreading on others to see how he comes across, and he can act accordingly (When Mike is thinking "Crap, I'm losing her!" it means Edward is doing it right.) But this is pretty good proof that Meyer never considered my excuse. This is just how Edwards roles.

If the Twilight world has the same literature on vampires as our world, I can excuse Bella for not guessing 'vampire'. Super speed isn't that common for vampires, nor is it exclusive, he's walking around during the day, and the "I'm dangerous to be around."-speech is something every superhero made to his love interest at some point. I agree superman is a much better fit than either Batman or Spiderman though.

Slightly off topic, this may have been mentioned before, but I just finished reading Terry Prachett's Carpe Jugulem, and it's scary how much the Vlad-Anges dynamic sounds like the Edward-Bella dynamic, except that it's been written by someone who doesn't think Edward's behavior is just sooooo romantic. This would just make me think it's a parody of Twilight, except that the book predates Twilight by almost a decade.

I find myself quite taken with the idea that you can look at a work and just infer the presence of characters who are never mentioned or referenced in the work itself. For example, I hereby assert that one of the major protagonists of Watership Down is John McClane, Bruce Willis' cop hero from Die Hard. Although he never actually makes an in-person appearance in the book, nor do the rabbit characters mention him, nor indeed is he referenced whatsoever in the narration, nonetheless the influence of John McClane from Die Hard can be felt on every page.

I do read some romance (not enough to be an expert, by any means, since I pretty much stick to funny historical or fantasy romance), but the only instances of anything remotely like Edward's Stunning Eyes that I've read in romance are times when the man is thrown off by the woman's beauty. Even then, I've never seen it to this degree. Partly because Earl Stonycroft (or whatever) is usually miffed about something unimportant (My gods, she's done over our bedroom in pink!) and partly because it's usually a temporary reaction. Earl Stonycroft storms off to complain about Muriel's pinkification of his manly room, is temporarily blindsided by how beautiful Muriel is, then makes his complaint in a more subdued way. Edward really does read like he's using some sort of power of befuddlement on Bella.

Now, that's not to say that there aren't romance novels in which the hero or heroine employ Edward's Stunning Eyes (5th level wizard spell). There very well might be. But I have a feeling it would read just as WTF?Glamor? there as here.

I've never commented before, but I'm de-lurking to say that Bella probably didn't mention Superman/Clark Kent because he has suffered a radical drop in popularity in the last couple of decades. Batman and Spiderman both have movie franchises, of course, which probably helps, but I think the real issue is Superman's clean-cut, all-American image, which makes seem more dated than the other two. Bella wouldn't mention him because she things Superman is kind of lame, while she thinks Edward is very cool.

(If anyone's interested, I first developed this theory while lifeguarding this summer. I saw literally dozens of batman and spiderman themed swim trunks, but not a single superman. not even a towel. The kids just don't care.)

@LKE thanks for the link. I checked it out. I think my real problem is with deciphering the dialogue within a single panel. I probably just need practice, because of lack of exposure.

@Chris: That's sweet of you, thanks.

For an example of the kind of trouble I have with comics, here's a comic that was linked to in another blog I follow:http://pennyandaggie.com/index.php?p=1269

If you look at the top left panel, my first reading of the dialogue went like this:Guy: Questions of modern life. This is me. Cree-Wri?Girl: See you at Cree-Wri this afternoon! Creative writing! it's a nickname! (etc)

I realised that couldn't be right, so I tried again and then got what I suppose is the intended reading:Guy: Questions of modern life. This is me.Girl: See you at Cree-Wri this afternoon!Guy: Cree-Wri?Girl: Creative Writing! etc.

But it was still hard. And if there's a rule to it, I can't seem to learn it. It seems like the rules change based on situations. In the bottom middle pane, I can't figure out why there are three bubbles, and it's hard not to read it as "Personally, Lisa, I think Cree-Wri that's what is a totally valid linguists call it corruption you know."

I think that Sinfest*, which is the only comic I currently follow (for I am enamored with the love story between Crim and Fuschia) tends to be somewhat easier to follow, but I could just be forgetting more complicated things.

The pattern it follows is left to right then top to bottom, so you read the panels just as you would read writing (everything in the line left to right, then move down to the next line.) The text bubbles within the panels are read the same way which could be problematic depending on placement (if you put one bubble in the lower left and another in the upper right you're technically supposed to read the upper one first, but I think a lot of people would go for the one on the left first) but I don't think it does anything quite as bad as the linked to comic. I could be completely wrong on that though.

Anyway, basically what I was thinking about would be to turn a comic into a slideshow. (I don't actually know how to make a slide show but I could break it up into individual images.) Instead of having all of the information packed into one place it would be separated out into it's individual parts. So for example, the comic linked to has 5 panels and 14 or 15 lines of dialog between them (depending on whether or not we count "..." as a line. Also, in the interests of accuracy, one of them was actually a thought.) Instead of having it all together at once I'd break it up into 14 or 15 images each of them showing only one panel and only one bubble in that panel. Then there would be no confusion about the order because each image would contain only one thing, and the images would be arranged in chronological order.

The problem would be actually doing it. It would require comics in digital form, time, effort, and probably that's about it, but I don't think any of those three things are the easiest to come by. Somewhere in this house is, I'm pretty sure, a copy of the first volume of the X-Men (not a first edition, of course, just a copy) and that would seem like a decent place for someone who has always wanted to read comic books to start, or at the very least not a bad place, but I have been unable to locate it and I don't even know if I have a working scanner.

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* I just looked back to the beginning and it has significantly changed since then. Very much for the better. I wonder when it reached the point where I'd recommend it, but I'm not going to figure out today.

Generally, in comics you go across first, then down. So if a comic is arranged like

[a][s][d][f]

then it's almost always a,s,d,f rather than a,d,s,f. Same rule for dialog bubbles.

Note, however, that dialog bubbles get shifted around a bit more to accommodate the panel art. In the bottom middle panel, for example, the dialogue across the top that you have trouble with is in two bubbles because the author thinks it looks better to have each phrase in its own bubble. That also helps avoid walls of text, which are generally considered unsightly and amateurish.

Also, that's not a guy in panel 1. That's a short-haired lesbian. It's a tad more obvious if you look at the previous page.

The rules for American-style comics are fairly simple - left to right, then top to bottom, just the way you read plain (English) text. Each bubble is independent (that is, you read all the words of one bubble before moving to the next), and each panel is independent (read all the bubbles in one panel before moving to the next.) The comic you linked to is read according to the standard rules.

Now, it can get confusing if you're reading *non-American* comics, particularly if the original language isn't English. Manga are written right-to-left in the original Japanese (and the books are bound that way too). But if you're reading in translation, then you have to know if the translator is using the original image as-is, or mirroring the image so the bubbles/panels can be read left-to-right American-style. I've seen both kinds of translations.

Thanks for the tips guys. :) And good to know I'm not the only one who had trouble with that one. I'm not particularly invested in reading that particular webcomic -- the person linking to it was discussing that Cree-Wri isn't actually a corruption, linguistically speaking, and I didn't need to be able to read the comic perfectly to understand the blog post. But it was an example of the thing that happens to me all the time when I try to read comics.

re: lesbian. Oh, so she is. I didn't bother looking at the previous comic till you mentioned it. But OMG guys, the previous comic is even worse And OMG guys, the previous one is even harder! http://pennyandaggie.com/index.php?p=1268

It's true that many of the 362,880 permutations can be excluded as unlikely. For example, I wouldn't guess 'sounds', 'guys', 'thats', 'duh', 'gosh', 'see', 'quick', 'well', 'okay'.

@Chris: that's a good idea, and that would make it easy to read the comics, but it would also be a lot of work to create, probably more trouble for you than it's worth -- hours and hours of work for a comic book that could be read in 15 minutes. But it's a sweet idea. *hugs*

I find comics like xkcd easier to read: probably because there isn't a lot of dialogue, rarely more than one saying per frame. But traditional comics I find difficult. I tried reading the manga Claymore online, and there was printed on the screen "read right to left". But I still had some trouble when there were more than one bubble per frame. And I felt like I didn't get as much out of it as when watching the cartoons. But I felt that if I were just a bit more genre savvy I'd be picking up on things that I was missing. Comic books are subtle.

My favourite webcomic is http://sum.livejournal.com/ Blind people make very easy to read webcomics. :D

This is the first strip if you want to read them in order: http://sum.livejournal.com/1999/09/12/ and you can click "next day" to read the next.

Don't be fooled by the March 2000 date; It's still being updated (albeit slowly), the dates are "in the world of the comic strip" not "in our world".

I actually think that is right, although honestly have no idea what to make of it reading it in that order. I tried to go back a couple of comics to get some more context, but it didn't really help. I think the comic is confusing in general.

"quick" "well" "gosh" "sounds" "see" all makes sense to me, I have no idea how the "duh" bubble is supposed to follow from see, "okay" is, I assume, directly following from "duh" but since I don't get the "duh" bubble I don't understand why that was the response to it. "guys" "that's" makes perfect sense in isolation, but I don't understand how it follows from "okay".

So, in summary, the comic seems pretty confusing, but I think you got the order right on your second try.

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On an entirely different subject, I sent you an email via Rambly Ramblings that I've just been told was never delivered but is still being tried to be delivered. So at some point in the future you might randomly get an email I sent to you two days ago. I'm pretty sure that there's nothing in it that still matters. In fact, you've already addressed everything in it well enough that I thought you had gotten it.

Mostly I sent it to let you know about the thread at Slacktivist where discussion of multiples was taking place. I was also wondering about blending which you have explained.

Changing the topic completely! But I wanted to comment about the fact that whenever Bella looks at Edward, she gets mesmerised, or whatever.

I THINK I'm remembering that when she and Edward try to kiss later on, something about being close to him (his breath?) really does make her light-headed and unable to think coherently, so it's not at all out of the ordinary here - just unexplained, since of course we still don't know what's so Special about him.

I'd not be surprised if his appearance in general works together with his scent/breath to entrap victims for food-time. I think that Bella had trouble not staring at the other Cullens earlier, too, didn't she?

ROBERT PATTINSON: OK, I get it. Abortion is super terrible awful because Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon. But surely she'd concede that it's morally permissible to save the life of the mother, right? Even the most hardline pro-lifers accept that, so there's no way Meyer would take an even more extreme fringe position by ...

KRISTEN STEWART: My baby is a telepath and it's killing me! No matter, even though I'll die carrying it to term, it's my duty as a woman and as a wife to bring this mutant vampire baby into this world.

I think everyone is missing why Batman's included here. He's the traditional "dark" superhero- and vampires are dark. I think that's the key. Yes, Twilight vampires are sparkly, but there's always that edge of hunger to them; just like Batman, who even in his best incarnations is still, you know, a crazy guy who runs around dressed as a bat.

@Chris: LJ's under a DDOS attack thanks to the elections in Russia, and I use my LJ e-mail address (which forwards to gmail) for everything, which means e-mails sent to my LJ address have been slow to arrive. Anyway, thanks for trying to warn me about that thread. Your e-mail hasn't arrived yet, but maybe someday it will. :) Mmy e-mailed me about it too, which is how I found it.

Part of me wants to try to find some significance in the fact that she only seems to doubt her sanity when Edward is nice to her, and is completely sure of it when Edward is hostile, but I have no idea what significance to find there.Since she thinks that Edward's perfect and she's worthless, she probably finds him treating her like an equal more bizarre than him treating her like he scraped her off his shoe. Apparently she finds it more bizarre than him having superpowers, which is really quite horrible.

Incidentally, there's apparently a Balkan legend about vampiric produce, although they lack the teeth to bite anyone. They aren't very dangerous.

So when we make it here, with Edward's eyes befuddling* her, making her mind go blank, and throwing her into a daze, we've already got that context and it doesn't feel like the sort of thing that would make me think attraction in any story. Bella's thought on hypnosis seems like a good one, other than that I'm not entirely sure.First up, I'd like to make clear that I do agree with you that the books do a horrible job of justifying any romance. Where I disagree, I think, is in our interpretation.

Readers don't come to this book in a vacuum. They've read the back cover, they know that this book is supposed to be a romance, and that's how they approach the text. Our critical analysis notwithstanding, "Twilight is a romance" has been successful enough to make the series incredibly popular and spawn movies, and as part of a deconstruction we have to at least acknowledge that.

Based on what isn't happening (Bella isn't getting into deep trouble for skipping almost all of her classes almost all of the time) we know what must be happening.That's also where I approach things. We know that Bella's friends aren't ostracizing her, so Bella must be meting the bare minimum social obligations. Despite not listening or mentally snarking every time her friends talk in-text, she knows enough about them to deflect her suitors onto an appropriate person.

What really drove this home for me was the scene where Bella made dinner and ate it with Charlie. There was no conversation at the meal, and we remarked how atypical that is. But Bella is supposed to be fairly normal to allow for readers to self-insert, so that means her home life must also be reasonably typical. Stilted, awkward togetherness -- all that's supported in-text -- isn't consistent with our supposedly-normal Bella.

I think that such ellipses are an odd secret of the books' popularity. By providing detail that may conflict with a typical reader's actual life, Meyer would have made it harder for the reader to insert themselves. Detail would make Bella a fully-drawn, independent character with consistent and explicit motivations, but she'd be her own character rather than whoever the reader wants. There is some leeway in what might happen off the page, but there comes a point where I feel as though it would be like saying, "one of the major protagonists of Watership Down is John McClane, Bruce Willis' cop hero from Die Hard".Alright, that's not quite fair. (But funny!) When we look at the work plus a typical reader as a whole, we see a different picture than when we look at just the text in isolation. I think we at least have to consider that, for many if not most, the reader's experience is that of a smouldering romance..

We don't have to introduce John McClane or hidden FBI agents to do this, but we do have to introduce emotions that the text doesn't acknowledge Bella having. We can't ignore that a typical reader brings a great deal of themselves to the experience, perhaps moreso than a more traditional work.

I suppose my main point is this: a typical reader experiences Twilight as a passionate romance between a sympathetic heroine and an attractive hero. This is not supported with a plain reading of the text, so what is the minimal set of extra assumptions we need in order to support this interpretation?

And this is where Edward comes in. In a culture of sexual double standards, sex is dangerous to girls, and more dangerous than it is to boys. A girl's right to consent and freedom from judgement are dependent on other people - a gift rather than a right. Edward occupies the Parfit Gentle Knight position: he wants to have sex with Bella, but he refuses to pressure her.

That makes a great deal of sense, especially since this interpretation is reinforced by later events. It's a bit early in the deconstructions, but I remember that the honeymoon sex with Edward was damaging for Bella, in that she woke up covered in bruises and the like. In a literal way, once Bella had sex she was "damaged goods." His "extravagant unselfishness" as you put it comes through even more after the marriage, where he assumes over Bella's protests that the harm[1] was unacceptable and will never happen again.

The worst part of the entire thing probably isn't even Edward, it's the meta-fact that Edward is right. He says that he's dangerous and that Bella should stay away, and that's true. He's reluctant to marry Bella, sleep with her, and finally to vampify her. Ultimately for the sake of the plot these things happen already, but only because he's too negative in his self-image. Everything he fears will happen ultimately does, and that he tries to save Bella from it just plays up his Gentle Knight image.

[1] -- Ugh. I'm sorry, I really can't quite get past this. I think Meyer was just going for a passionately-intense sex (what's good? Sex. What's better? Passionate, rough sex. So what do Bella and Edward have? ZOMGORZROUGH sex!), but it's... just can't unsee the abuse. That, and what Bella gets out of intercourse with a statue I do not know.

"quick" "well" "gosh" "sounds" "see" all makes sense to me, I have no idea how the "duh" bubble is supposed to follow from "see", "okay" is, I assume, directly following from "duh" but since I don't get the "duh" bubble I don't understand why that was the response to it.

Fiona is suggesting that she is sufficiently oblivious to her own repressed anger that she is liable to find herself on the clock tower with a gun picking out targets, and go, "Huh, what am I doing here?"

Sara responds by suggesting that Fiona's joking about shooting people from the clock tower is likely to draw the attention of the campus police.

Then Fiona abruptly changes the subject (likely interpreting--probably correctly--Sara's line about the campus police as a request for a cessation of the watchtower-shooting subject). She is probably going back to a thought from the story she was telling in her very first dialogue bubble here.

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